Horses at Hoddles Creek

 As amazing as Melbourne was to me I really just wanted get my specified work finished (which I needed to do to be able to apply for a second year visa,) so I didn't have to think about it any longer and it was out of the way. So just after a few days staying with Patrick I left and headed for a place called Hoddles Creek, about an hour and a half east outside of the city.

While I was staying with Ineka and John (in Beauty Point, Tassie) I'd got in touch with a host that I'd found in my wwoof book, (a list of people who were looking for volunteers  to come and stay and help them out,) and arranged to stay for the remaining nine weeks of my specified work time.

Trish and Brian Wettenhall had their own stables and trained and bred horses, an animal I'd never worked with and was obsessed with as most little girls are when growing up, so it seemed like a great opportunity to be able to work with them.

I caught a train to Lilydale and from there a overcrowded bus to a place called Lustia Park Road where I was to be met by Brian.

 It doesn't matter how many times you have to travel on an overcrowded bus with a rucksack, I swear it doesn't get any easier and people certainly don't seem to get any nicer. The forty minutes or so of the journey I had to block the isle as someone snotty nosed teenager sat in the luggage rack and everyone else tripped over my bag countless times and I had to continually apologise to people who gave me a look of disgust as to why I'd be on their bus with such a large bag. I obviously had planned for the bus to be busy and wanted to get in everybody’s way.

I met Brian at the next bus stop along as the driver had forgotten my request to point out when I needed to get off and to be honest Brian didn't seem any friendlier once I met him either. The whole journey to their home was broken up with some somewhat awkward conversation- me trying to ask questions and be friendly and Brian seemingly ignoring that I was there and barely answering me.

When we arrived he didn't really seem to even make the fake 'oh i'll get your bag for you' movements and he showed me into a room where he said I could stay in. I was hoping that it was just me and that once I got to know these people things would change.

The house itself was nice enough. Quite big, bungalow style set in the middle of a large area of land to the side of a large stable.

The was already a girl there wwoofing, a German girl, in her late twenties although see looked more as though she was in her late teens who was just about as talkative as Brian. She was leaving the next day anyways so I didn't try too hard to talk to her as I guess it didn't really matter much.

You meet so many people when travelling that you can sense what people are like on first impressions, whether or not they are the kind of people you want to stick around and get to know or whether they’re just not your kind of person. The German girl was nice, but the kind of nice which is boring and un-talkative, so I didn’t really feel it necessary to make the effort to make conversation. 

That evening over dinner Trish had asked me a few questions about myself and my family although to be honest she didn't really seem that interested in the answers.

Looking back on it, it all seems rather pretty terrible and I wonder why I stayed for so long but it didn't seem that way at the time, well at least in the beginning.

The work was hard but I enjoyed it. It was fantastic to work around and see the horses and there was so many of them. Each day I would muck out the stables, feed and gave water to the horses, took the horses into the paddocks at the start of the day and back in at night. The best parts were when I got the chance to wash and brush them and put their reigns on. I really enjoyed that and soon had favorites. These horses were great competition winners and it was a real honour being able to work with them.

The night after I'd got there Trish had received a phone call to say that her dad had had a heart attack and she'd rushed off to the hospital.

During the week there was a girl that stayed called Lizzy. She had several of her horses in the stables and stayed and helped Trish train and take care of them. She was there only the first week and a half however and headed off to a big competition that was happening in Sydney the second week, which Trish would have gone to also if it wasn't for her dad. In some ways I'm thankful she didn’t leave that week as she was going to leave me behind on my own to look after the stables- something I wasn't too happy about. 

A girl from Tassie had come to stay to, who was meant to go to the show with Trish on the Monday (of my second week there) but because of Trish not going to the show helped me out around the stables instead. As the week went on though I started to like being there less and less. I just seemed to get stuck with all the rubbish jobs and forever seemed to be mucking out stables and not doing any of the stuff with the horses that I'd enjoyed so much. Carly seemed to be asked to do all these things instead. I was starting to really feel like Cinderella getting left to do all the cleaning while the ugly sisters didn't have to do anything!

(While speaking to my dad on  Skype he asked me what the countryside looked like where I was and i couldn't even tell him as I'd barely been out the stables or looked beyond the paddocks!)

I didn’t really think about leaving though until the Saturday evening. Trish had decided as she was going to the national show now until the Monday morning that she'd go with her friend to a local day show not so far away on the Sunday. The three of us were sat in the living room and Trish was telling Carly when she needed to get up the next day and told me that I didn't have to get up till lunchtime to do the afternoon jobs. If I didn't feel annoyed about being left behind to do all the stable work on my own for the week I felt annoyed now that it hadn't even occurred to her that I might have wanted to go to the show the next day with them. Now I definitely felt like Cinderella not being allowed to go to the ball!

I was fuming, not that I let on to Trish, but told Carly later on when we were in the bedroom. She was really suprised too that Trish hadn't offered me to go to the show, seen as though they were going away to Sydney on the Monday and I wouldn't be going with them.

After talking to Carly I had decided that I was going to tell Trish that I wanted to go to the show, but when I went to talk to her she'd gone to bed so I decided to get up at 5 with them and tell her then.

She agreed that I could go in the morning, but she definitely wasn't happy about it and she wasn't shy in letting me know complaining all day about how much work had to be done when we got back. At the end of the day I was only there to help out , learn new things and meet interesting people who's lives differed from my own and was only expected to work for five days a week- working seven days and being expected to look after 30+ horses on my own for two weeks isn't part of the deal- especially when I have no previous experience of working with horses.

Turns the show wasn't even worth it... dressage is boring, but at least I got the chance to experience something new.

I decided that even though I'd agreed to stay for there nine weeks, I was going to leave after a month. It was my decision what I did with my time here in Oz and I'd come to the conclusion I didn't want to do that any more.

It was great having the chance to work with the horses and I learnt a lot, but something I’ve learnt in my travels is that it doesn't matter where you are or what your doing it the people that really make it, and these people were not making it for me.